Shannonville Motorsport Park
The
Shannonville Motorsport Park is a
Canadian motorsport road course circuit. It is located 15km east of
Belleville, Ontario, roughly midway between
Toronto and
Montreal, Quebec, near
Highway 401 and along the former Provincial Highway 2.
It has many configurations, and its tight layout with lots of run-off space makes it a very good venue for race testing. Many race teams from Toronto and Montreal test at Shannonville in preparation for events held on
street circuits, as the Shannonville raceway shares a lot of the same characteristics.
The raceway first started off as a dirt oval, with bedrock for a front straight. Much later, the 1.8km "Nelson" circuit was built, named after the late John Nelson, owner of the circuit at the time. From there, the 2.23km "Fabi" circuit was built north of the Nelson, and the two were linked to form the 4.03km, 14-corner "Long Track". The Fabi circuit was named after
Bertrand Fabi, a young Canadian driver who died while testing a
Formula 3 car in
England. The Fabi circuit has a long backstraight that now doubles as a drag strip. A link was then made after the first corner on the Nelson circuit to the seventh corner of the Long Circuit, creating the 2.47km "Pro Circuit" layout.
Currently, the
Canadian Superbike series makes a few visits there, as well as auto-racing body
CASC (Regional Road Races).
Drag racing is also heavily featured there.
*
Trackpedia guide to driving Shannonville*
official site.
